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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

No, it is not feasible to construct in the modern world. France has been trying, and failing miserably.

I'm begging that anybody who believes that nuclear is possible to construct today, to look at any of the many places where it has been attempted: any of the French EPR or the AP1000s in the US. It has been abandoned by all, except for a few startups working on small modular reactors. These had been avoided in the past because it was thought they could never be as economical as the large reactors that we can't construct today.

And even before that, nuclear was abandoned in the US not because of TMI or Chernobyl, but because it had been a financial and managerial disaster:

https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-...

Further, if France was such a success, what are the costs of their build? And why did they stop at only about a third of the planned number of reactors?

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The US builds a 700MW reactor every 4 years[1][2], and a 200MW reactor every 2 years[3][4]. The Navy has operated these designs (or very similar ones) for decades without incident, and considering the per-unit cost of the complete ships that feature them, they seem substantially cheaper than most of the civilian construction projects. My last boss had previously worked with some of the Navy's high-level nuclear administration people, and said their program was extremely well-run, partially due to a conservative, risk-adverse, albeit cliquish approach to reactor safety: "Don't ever come to us trying to change anything, we've already paid the blood tax to figure this stuff out, our processes clearly work very well, and we're almost certainly smarter than you and have already considered anything you want to suggest anyway."

I'm not sure why we don't fork the reactor designs with some minor changes for powering urban grid infrastructure....Hmmm, maybe a sneaky rollout would be to establish a bunch of "test reactors" physically on naval bases, but with grid connections to the local cities.....essentially subsidizing the national power grid with US Navy nuclear assets.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1B_reactor [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-class_submarine

These reactors always eventually come up in discussion, but I think that nobody seems willing to use these sorts of designs due to proliferation concerns. The builders refuse to make any changes, and society refuses to let these reactors out of military hands. I have a feeling that there would need to be very big changes for terrestrial operation, as well. Heat rejection is already a big part of nuclear reactor design and something that is getting harder as the climate changes.

> https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-...

The link you post talks about the project mismanagement and bad incentives that tanked nuclear prices. This isn't anything new. The US has been failing to build new infrastructure on time and under budget for decades now and it's a much larger problem than just nuclear plants.

> Further, if France was such a success, what are the costs of their build? And why did they stop at only about a third of the planned number of reactors?

I mean, I don't think there's definitive proof that cost is the reason here. Whataboutism isn't enough to sow doubt, we need a more clear line of reasoning.

I'm glad that you agree that the US has a systemic inability to build all types of infrastructure like nuclear.

But it's a bit unfair to call my questions about the supposed success of France when you are the one who brought up the topic. I have searched for cost numbers on the Mesmer plan a few times and came up dry. Yet I still hear it as evidence that nuclear was cost effective and a good idea, without any numbers or data attached to it. So if it was cost effective, where are the numbers? And why did they stop at a fraction of what they had planned? These are earnest questions, directly on topic, directly about the feasibility of constructing nuclear. But I'm not surprised that nobody has the details, as I've never met a nuclear advocate that has investigated it as much as I have and could provide me with a single new fact. I am very interested in all potential solutions to climate change, but I don't see how nuclear could be one after three history I have learned and the recent track record with construction. Nuclear as climate solution does not have enough basis in fact for me to be able to support it.

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